Once Too Much | Self ft. Vivienne
The seconds on the clock above their heads ticked by loudly as Ethan sat across from his mother and waited for an answer. Vivienne Hathaway simply kept looking at the papers on her desk in front of her, her pen gliding against the paper with ease. Her glasses sat low on her nose which gave her a stern edge. Ethan chewed on the soft flesh of the inside on his lip -- he’d posed his question and didn’t dare to push her for an answer, thus tried to wait patiently. Tried. He knew better than that. In the minutes he’d spent there with her already she must’ve made up her mind. Would she speak it?
Her youngest son shifted in his seat a bit, leaning forward. “Mother,” he began again. If he himself hadn’t been so restless he wouldn’t even have approached her in the first place. This wasn’t something lightly asked for, but Ethan had no options left. Perhaps he was desperate even, grasping for ease of mind with his tummy tightening into painful knots. And God knew that Vivienne had so much on her own mind, and this? This wasn’t a even family matter. Far from it, actually. Who else was he supposed to turn to, though? Who else would help, if not Vivienne? She had always been there for her children, without failure. She had never, not even once, left Ethan hanging, even when he didn’t deserve her kindness. Surely, that wouldn’t change... “Please, as a personal favour to me--”
The old woman’s eyes moved up and she glared at Ethan. Her hand stilled, and she regarded her son with a piercing stare he had not been victim to as much as his siblings had. Vivienne took in a deep breath and exhaled through her nose, set her pen and glasses aside and linked her fingers. Clearly, Ethan’s words didn’t please her. Not in the slightest bit. “As a personal favour to you?” she asked, voice cold. Even her favourite could cross lines. He had done so once too much, it seemed. “You want me to offer my assets to St. Clair as a personal favour? Have you gone mad, Ethan?”
“This isn’t about me,” Ethan was quick to defend himself. He was aware that what he’d asked of Vivienne was more than he thought he’d ever dare, but there he sat, half-begging, half-gambling. She will listen, he tried to convince himself. She will listen, and she will help, because she loves me best. “Not at all. This is about my best friend. She’s missing and--”
With a wave of her hand -- clearly having heard enough out of him today -- Vivienne cut her son off. “Oh, I know about your ‘best friend’ all right,” she scoffed. When Ethan opened his mouth for another protest, that earned him an icy stare. “Nicolas St. Clair has countless loyalists under him looking for Aurélie day and night. Men and women who’re not afraid to get their hands dirty. Men and women who would kill to save the girl and get that bonus they were, without doubt, promised,” she said. She had a point -- of course she did, but Ethan couldn’t just sit on his hands and do nothing about it. He simply couldn’t bare another day wondering if Aurélie was even still alive, if she would make it home safe and in one piece. She didn’t deserve it, not her. And it killed Ethan inside that all he could do was sit in his office and keep working on his cases as if nothing had changed. That he didn’t know if he would ever see her again. That feeling was poison, and it festered. “I do not believe Nicolas needs help in finding his granddaughter.”
He had to keep trying. He had to. This was Aurélie they were talking about. If anything happened to her, Ethan didn’t want to spend the rest of his life blaming himself for not having done more. “Mother, please, listen to me--”
“Enough.” It was said calmly but with such force behind it that it made Ethan’s shoulders slump and lean back in his seat as if he was a child again, scolded for something so trivial. Vivienne was having none of it. This wasn’t something he could win with charm and a ‘pretty please’. “Ethan Christopher Hathaway, I’ve had it up here with your so called personal favours,” the matriarch said. She looked her son straight in the eyes, staring him down. God, did he feel little. “Considering how much I let you get away with already, one would think you’d have at least the decency to not ask me for this. I don’t make alliances easily, and I certainly don’t make them quickly over some girl, no matter how important she is to you. So, I suggest, that instead of bothering me you go and fix your relationship with Pénélope. Because if you think I will tolerate my granddaughter living her life as a bastard and a Dusautoir and not Hathaway, you are mistaken.” Vivenne picked back up her pen and glasses and added, without sparing Ethan another glance:
